


Is it the sea you hear in me?

by plethora



Category: Florence + the Machine
Genre: F/F, Minor Angst, Pining, Selkies, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 04:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5693869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plethora/pseuds/plethora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isa remembers when they first encountered one another. Her having wandered off from the party she was attending in favour of cooling off in the sea, and Flo- Flo, the naked girl laid in the waves. Chest heaving, bright red hair flung wide by the water, teeth bared at the sky. The sight had socked her right in the chest and left her speechless and wanting.</p><p>And so what if she was drunk and tired and raw feeling when it'd happened? She'd felt it sure as anything when their eyes locked. Oh. Oh, god. You. It's going to be you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is it the sea you hear in me?

**Author's Note:**

> seen as florence (and myself!) are ocean obsessed, I thought it only fitting to write her as a selkie, and isa as her longing, pining land wife. please drop me a message if you have any florabella prompts. I'd love to write more of these two!
> 
> [poem featured: mad girl's love song - slyvia plath
> 
> other quote: you had me at hello - mhairi mcfarlane]
> 
> enjoy!

They meet at 12pm every tuesday usually, but this time it's been far longer. Weeks, plural. Isa doesn't even know how seals tell the time, but they can. It's probably something to do with the position of the sun, she thinks, as she clambers impatiently over the rocks at the shore. She's so anxious in case she goes another week without her. She couldn't bear it. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slow, slow, slow.

 

She has to wait a bit, so she takes a book with her. Plath this time. _I think I made you up inside my head_ she recites from memory before she's even opened the it, little folded corners marking her place. She looks on the inside cover first though, and reads the quote scrawled there by someone else before she came across it at the secondhand market. She's traced the words with her finger so many times they're beginning to fade.

 

_From that first moment we met. It was...not love at first sight exactly, but - familiarity. Like: oh, hello, it's you. It's going to be you._

 

It's so fitting, she thinks, remembering when they first encountered one another. Her having wandered off from the party she was attending in favour of cooling off in the sea, and Flo- Flo, the naked, mad girl laid in the waves. Chest heaving, bright red hair flung wide by the water, teeth bared at the sky. The sight had socked her right in the chest and left her speechless and wanting.

 

And so what if she was drunk and tired and raw feeling when it'd happened? She'd felt it sure as anything when their eyes met. Oh. Oh, you. It's going to be you. Then Flo'd skulked closer and zeroed in on Isa properly, their gazes locking like a jigsaw puzzle piece slotting into place, and she'd been done for.

 

She smirks. _My girlfriend belongs to the sea_ sounds made up. The stuff of doomed, fatalistic poetry. Absolute nonsense. And yet...it's true. She's in love with a legend.

 

Isa dips her feet in and lets the water lap up to her knees and looks out to the horizon. It's a calm day. The waves are small and deepest blue, so clear that when the sun hits the water she can see the seaweed and bracken clinging to the rocks below.

 

She reads on.

 

 _The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,_  
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:  
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.  


 

It still hits her like a slap, remembering the time Flo read it. Picking up the book from her bedside table the very first time she'd come back to Isa's house. Dodging her housemates and hurrying her upstairs two at a time, wanting to keep her secret. Something just for her. Them, she supposes. Just for them. Flo laughing as bright as dawn and peeling off the clothes Isa had lent her to get her from the beach without causing a riot-

 

\- then pausing, eyes snagging on the book. Long, pale fingers closing around it's spine and bringing it to her chest.

 

 _Plath!_ She'd whispered. She was still clutching her skin under one arm. _She was still alive the last time I came to shore._

 

She'd looked far away for a moment – somewhere too deep for light to reach, and Isa had shuddered suddenly, someone stepping on her grave.

 

Then Flo had looked at her, really looked at her. Reached out to hold her chin in her palm and dropped her skin and kissed her. Kissed her lips raw and kicked the sheets to the bottom of the bed and laid hands on her stomach and thighs and between her legs, and something had sparked within her right then. A barb, a harpoon, a something that felt like the feeling of coming home but in a person. This otherworldly creature she was anchored together with had picked her, and oh how happily she'd drown.

 

She's thinking hard that she doesn't notice the sleek shape bobbing steadily closer through the water until it nips her toes.

 

Isa yelps, and the shape surfaces. Bright, huge eyes and a great deal of whiskers, snorting out air in amusement.

 

“You're late.” she says, aiming for stern, but she's smiling so wide her cheeks hurt.

 

Another rough exhale of air, and then Flo is hauling herself up onto the rocks, albeit a little clumsily.

Isa unfolds the blanket she's taken from her bag and covers her with it unceremoniously, and if seals can make annoyed sounds, Isa pretends not to hear.

 

She turns her back, and waits, because Flo still gets a little self-concious about how ungainly the chamge is. There's a scuffling, scrabbling sort of sound for a minute or two, and then a very human groan, and Isa gets one of those cheek-hurting grins again. She scrambles round, nearly pitching herself into the sea, and there she is, her Flo, back on land and back hers and _here._

 

It's been three weeks since the last time they saw each other but it takes less than three seconds for her to climb into Flo's lap and hug her tight enough that she can feel her heart beating, chest-to-chest.

 

“You've been gone. Too. Long.” she says, punctuating each word with a kiss. Cheek, forehead, lips. Flo's arms close around her waist and she leans their foreheads together, just breathing each other in. Flo smells of the sea. Of depth and salt tempered by the warmth of her heart. Isa squeezes her eyes shut for a long moment and pecks her lips again.

 

“Don't go so long next time.”

 

Flo kisses her, deeper this time, and there's a crease between her brows when she pulls away, like she really is sorry.

 

“I know, my love.” she says. “But the storms drove us away, far from here. It took a while to get back. I've been swimming for two days.”

 

“Not two days straight, surely?”

 

“Two days straight.” Flo affirms with a nod of her head and Isa swats at her.

 

“That's not good! Lord knows, I've missed you but god- I don't want you dying of exhaustion!”

 

Flo tips her head back and laughs.

 

“Oh, darling. No. It doesn't work like that, not- not when we've found our love. I'd swim for a week straight to get to you. We feel it. Right here.”

 

She takes Isa's hand and presses it to her breastbone.

 

“It twists and tugs and- it's like a tightening knot. And then I come to you, and I reach the shore, and it- it just. Disappears. Slackens to nothing. Surely you understand?”

 

Isa bites her lip and nods. She feels it too, even now, but as a steady, thrumming warmth. A beast tamed.

 

For a while anyway.

 

She brushes their noses together a final time and clambers off.

 

“We should get going.” she says, looking at the sky. It's taken a turn for the dark, and she doesn't want Flo to get cold as well as exhausted. All she's brought for her to wear for the trip back is a sun dress and a pair of her better knickers. No shoes, though. Flo hates shoes, and prefers to go barefoot unless she absolutely has to wear them. Isa's big, fluffy nana slippers are the only exception, but Isa secretly thinks this is only because Flo is so sweet on her.

 

Flo nods and drops the blanket to pull her clothes on, cotton sticking to her wet skin. Isa can't take her eyes off her. Even rushing to get dressed there's an otherworldly grace about her. A sharp look in her eye that draws Isa in. _Bloody selkies_ , she thinks, and shoves her book back into her backpack. It's a good thing it's overcast and the beaches are deserted or she'd give someone a heart attack.

 

Isa eyeballs Flo's skin, folded neatly on a slightly higher rock and feels an instinctive little pull of protectiveness that causes her fingers to twitch towards it. She shouldn't.

 

From the corner of her eye she sees Flo smoothing down her dress and turns back to her, holding out her hand for Flo to haul her up.

 

“Come on, home.” she says, and Isa's heart beats a little faster. Home. She's calling Isa's jumbled, messy, bloody dysfunctional flat _home._

 

Flo scoops up her skin and helps her back onto the beach. She's stumbling along the rocky outcrop and Flo is nimble as anything even in her exhaustion - balance perfect, fingers interlocking with hers and squeezing, not letting go.

 

They walk hand in hand back up onto the pavement and lope steadily onwards until Flo spots a candyfloss stall. Her eyes light up. She's a weird fascination with the stuff that Isa doesn't quite get, but is willing to indulge.

 

“Have you a pound, Isa?” she says excitedly, and Isa rummages in her pocket. Bus ticket, lip balm, cloakroom ticket- _aha!_

 

A pound.

 

She passes it to her and Flo hands it over, pointedly ignoring the strange look the old man minding the stall gives her barely dressed and mostly soaked state.

 

“Thanks.” she says, and takes an inhumanly large bite of the stuff. Isa's never cared for it but now, looking at her, she wonders if she'll still taste it on her lips later.

 

She flushes a little and waits for Flo to grasp her hand again, only to be left wanting.

 

Flo's no free hand, with her candyfloss in the clutch of one and her skin in the other.

 

Isa feels the distance open up between them like a cavern, anxiety spiking. Irrational, she knows, but she can't help it. She's too far/too close/ _not enough_ and christ, it crashes over her like a wave, the sudden swell of pain she gets just from not holding her fucking hand. She's almost angry at herself for being so pathetic.

 

“It's okay.” she says, lying. “Come on. Onwards.”

 

Flo, however, looks calculating for a second, lips pursed in thought.

 

“No.” she murmurs. “It's not.”

 

She takes a deep breath and nods to herself, and Isa waits.

 

“You take it.” Flo says.

 

“The.....the candyfloss?” she replies, because surely she doesn't mean take her skin. They've fallen truly, madly, deeply, in love but the legends never end well if a human takes a selkie skin. There's always a selfish, stupid, embittered man at the beginning who tries to take the skin and hide it so he can coerce a selkie into marrying him. The ultimate betrayal after she trusts him enough to safekeep it.

 

And at the end? A dead body and a woman who vanishes into the sea and never, never, returns.

 

Isa flinches. She'd never dare do that to Flo. She loves her too dearly to deny her anything, even if what she desires takes her away from Isa.

 

“No.” Flo says, stronger this time. “I meant the skin.You carry it.”

 

Isa's jaw drops open a little.

 

“You want me to-? To-?”

 

Flo squirms under her gaze then sticks her chin out, defiant, resolve strengthened.

 

“Yes. Don't look so shocked, I'm not asking you to hide it or anything-”

 

“I'd never!”

 

“-I know, darling. I-. I know. But I want a hand free to hold onto you. And I also want eat this. So. For god's sake, Isa, just cram it in your backpack.” She smiles, and plucks a bit more off the cloud with her fingers, holding it out for Isa to eat. She does so, but nips her finger too.

 

“Ouch!”

 

Isa snorts and shrugs bag off her shoulder. She opens it up to make space and pulls out the silky slip dress she'd been umh-ing and ah-ing over as to whether to wear to meet Flo, packing it just in case she changed her mind.

 

She lays it out on the pavement and kneels on it to keep it from blowing away as Flo hands over her skin. The second it lands in her hands her stomach jolts like when a roller coaster does an unexpectd turn, heart hammering. It's a bizarre clash of right/wrong feelings. Wrong because it's not hers, she's no right to have it, _put it back put it back put it back._ Right because Florence _is_ hers just like she's Flo's.

 

Flo looks at her curiously.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Isa gathers her wits and nods. She places it in the centre of the slip and folds it around the grey, speckly fur until it is completely wrapped, then gently pushes it into her bag. It feels like she's carrying around a soul bound in silk. She is really, she supposes.

 

She gets to her feet, and there's a moment, just a little snapshot she takes in her head, of what she sees before her – her otherworldly and odd girl, shining and happy before her. Hair strung out in the wind like a flare, sea glass eyes gazing back towards the ocean but bare feet carrying her forward to Isa, to her home, to her bed.

 

She's only snapped out of it by Flo giving her wrist a squeeze then slipping her fingers between Isa's own again, clutching.

 

“Home.” she whispers.

 

“Home.” Isa whispers back.

 

 _I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed_  
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.  
(I think I made you up inside my head.) 

 

**Author's Note:**

> kudos/comments are greatly appreciated! feel free to follow me on tumblr - i'm hotcommunist <3


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